[XI] 'And when the thousand years shall be finished,' it says, 'Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall go forth to seduce the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them into battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.' To this end, therefore, will he then seduce them, that he may draw them into this war. For before, too, by the means he could, he was seducing them into many and various evils. But 'he shall go forth' is said, meaning 'he shall break forth into open persecution out of the lurking-places of his hatreds.' For this will be the last persecution, with the last judgment impending, which the holy Church throughout the whole world shall suffer — namely the whole city of Christ from the whole city of the devil, however great each of the two shall be upon the earth.
These nations, indeed, which it calls Gog and Magog, are not to be so understood as though they were certain barbarians settled in some part of the earth — whether those whom some suspect to be the Getae and Massagetae on account of the first letters of these names, or certain other foreigners separated from Roman jurisdiction. For it is signified that these are throughout the whole world, when it is said 'the nations which are in the four corners of the earth,' and it added that they are Gog and Magog. The interpretation of whose names we have found to be: Gog, 'a roof'; Magog, 'from the roof' — as it were, a house and he himself who comes forth from the house.
They are, therefore, the nations in which we understood the devil, as it were, to be shut up above as in an abyss, and he himself in a certain manner lifting himself up out of them and coming forth; so that they are the roof, he 'from the roof.' But if we refer both to the nations, and not one of these to them and the other to the devil, then: they themselves are the roof, because in them the ancient enemy is now shut up and in a certain way covered; and they themselves shall be 'from the roof' when out of concealment they shall break forth into open hatred. As to what it says: 'And they went up over the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city':
they are assuredly not signified to have come or to be about to come to one place, as though the camp of the saints and the beloved city were to be in some one place — since this is nothing other than the Church of Christ diffused throughout the whole world; and hence wherever it shall then be — which shall be among all nations, as is signified by the name 'breadth of the earth' — there shall be the camp of the saints, there shall be that city beloved of God; there shall it be encompassed by all its enemies (since they too shall be with it among all nations) by the monstrousness of that persecution — that is, it shall be pressed, urged, and hemmed into the straits of tribulation; yet it shall not desert its warfare, which is designated by the word 'camp.' [XII] But as to what it says:
'And fire came down from heaven and devoured them' — this is not to be thought to be that final punishment which shall be when it is said: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.' For then indeed they themselves shall be cast into the fire, and fire from heaven shall not come upon them. But here 'fire from heaven' is well understood of the very firmness of the saints, whereby they will not yield to the raging ones so as to do their will. For heaven is the firmament, by whose firmness those enemies shall be tormented with most burning zeal, since they shall not be able to draw the saints of Christ to the side of Antichrist. And this itself shall be the fire that shall devour them, and this from God, because it is by God's gift that the saints become insuperable, whence their enemies are tortured. For just as it is set down in a good sense:
'The zeal of thine house hath devoured me'; so on the contrary: 'Zeal hath seized the untaught people, and now fire shall devour the adversaries.' And 'now' certainly — that is, apart from the fire of that final judgment. Or if he called that plague, by which the persecutors of the Church are to be smitten when Christ is already coming — those whom he shall find living and upon the earth, when he shall slay Antichrist with the breath of his mouth — 'fire descending from heaven and devouring them,' then neither shall this be the last punishment of the impious, but that which they are to suffer when the resurrection of the bodies has taken place. [XIII] This last persecution, which is to come from Antichrist (as we have already said, since it is set down both above in this book and in the prophet Daniel), shall last three years and six months.
As to this period, though brief, whether it belongs to the thousand years during which he says both that the devil is bound and that the saints reign with Christ, or whether this small span is added over and above those same years and is outside them, is deservedly a matter of doubt; because, if we say that it belongs to those same years, then the kingdom of the saints with Christ will be found to extend not for so long a time, but for a more prolonged one, than the devil is bound. For assuredly the saints with their King shall reign, especially in that very persecution, overcoming such great evils, when the devil will no longer be bound so that he can persecute them with all his powers.
In what way, then, does this Scripture determine both by these same thousand years — namely the binding of the devil and the reign of the saints — since by the interval of three years and six months the binding of the devil ceases earlier than the reign of the saints in these thousand years with Christ? But if we say that this small span of that persecution is not to be reckoned in the thousand years, but rather to be added after they are completed — so that it can properly be understood that, when it had said, 'The priests of God and of Christ shall reign with him a thousand years,' it added: 'And when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison';
for in this way it signifies that both the reign of the saints and the chain of the devil are to cease together, so that thereafter the time of that persecution belongs neither to the reign of the saints nor to the imprisonment of Satan — both of which are within the thousand years — but is believed to be added over and above and reckoned outside: then we shall be forced to confess that the saints shall not reign with Christ in that persecution. But who could bear to hear that his members shall not then reign with him, when they will cleave to him most of all and most strongly, and at the time when, the more fierce the onslaught of the war shall be, the greater the glory of not yielding, the thicker the crown of martyrdom? Or if, on account of the tribulations which they shall suffer, they are not to be said to reign:
then it would follow that even in the earlier days within those same thousand years, whoever of the saints were being afflicted, would be said, at that very time of their tribulation, not to have reigned with Christ; and hence also those whose souls the author of this book writes that he saw — 'of them that were slain for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God' — were not reigning with Christ when they were suffering persecution, and they themselves were not the kingdom of Christ, whom Christ possessed most excellently. This indeed is most absurd, and by every means to be abhorred.
But surely the victorious souls of the most glorious martyrs, all their sorrows and labours overcome and finished, after they had laid down their mortal members, assuredly reigned and reign with Christ, until the thousand years be finished, so that afterward, having received their bodies also, now immortal, they may reign. Accordingly, during those three years and a half, the souls of those slain for his martyr's testimony — both those who went out of their bodies before, and those who are to go out in that very last persecution — shall reign with him, until the mortal age be finished and there be a passing over to that kingdom where death shall not be.
Wherefore the years of the saints reigning with Christ shall be more than those of the devil's chain and imprisonment, since they with their King, the Son of God, shall reign even through those three years and a half when the devil is no longer bound. It remains, therefore, that when we hear: 'The priests of God and of Christ shall reign with him a thousand years, and when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison,' we either understand that not the thousand years of this reign of the saints are ended, but of the devil's chain and imprisonment — so that the thousand years, that is, all their respective years, each part having them to be ended with its own diverse and proper durations, the reign of the saints being more ample, the devil's chain briefer;
or else, since three years and six months is a very short span, we are to believe that it was not desired to be reckoned — whether because it seems to make the chain of Satan less, or the kingdom of the saints more — just as I discussed concerning the four hundred years in the sixteenth volume of this work; since they were something more, and yet were called four hundred; and such things are often found in the sacred writings, if one takes note. [XIV] But after this mention of the last persecution, it briefly comprehends the whole of what, in the now final judgment, the devil and the enemy city with its prince shall suffer. For it says: 'And the devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet are;'
'and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' We have said above that the beast is well understood as the impious city itself. His false prophet, indeed, is either Antichrist or that image — that is, the figment — of which we there spoke. After these things, narrating that final judgment itself, which shall be in the second resurrection of the dead, which is of the bodies, and recapitulating in what manner it had been revealed to him: 'And I saw,' he says, 'a great and white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face fled heaven and earth, and their place was not found.' He did not say: 'I saw a great and white throne, and one sitting upon it, and from his face fled heaven and earth,' since this was not done then, that is, before there was judgment concerning the living and the dead;
but he said that he saw him sitting on the throne, from whose face heaven and earth flee — but afterward. For, the judgment being accomplished, then shall this heaven and this earth cease to be, when there shall begin to be a new heaven and a new earth. For by a change of things, not by an utter perishing, shall this world pass away. Whence the Apostle also says: 'For the fashion of this world passeth away — I would have you to be without carefulness.' The fashion, therefore, passes away, not the nature. When, then, John had said that he saw one sitting upon the throne, from whose face — which is to happen afterward — heaven and earth flee: 'And I saw,' he says, 'the dead, great and small, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is that of the life of each one;'
'and the dead were judged out of the very writings of the books, according to their works.' He said that books were opened, and a book; but of what kind the book was he did not keep silent: 'It is,' he says, 'of the life of each one.' Therefore those books, which he placed in the former position, are to be understood as the holy Scriptures, both old and new, that in them might be shown what things God had commanded to be done by his ordinances; but in that book which is of the life of each one, which of these things each one had not done or had done. If this book be conceived carnally, who could estimate its size or length? Or in how long a time could a book be read in which are written the entire lives of all men?
Or shall there be present as great a number of angels as there shall be of men, and each one shall hear his own life recited to him by the angel assigned to him? Then there shall not be one book of all, but a separate book for each. But this Scripture, wishing one to be understood, says: 'And another book was opened.' A certain divine power, therefore, is to be understood, whereby it shall come to pass that to each one all his deeds, whether good or evil, are recalled to memory and discerned by the gaze of the mind with marvellous swiftness, so that knowledge may accuse or excuse the conscience, and thus simultaneously both all and each are judged. Which divine power, doubtless, has received the name of a book. For in it, in a certain manner, is read whatever, by its working, is recollected.
But in order to show who the dead are that are to be judged, the small and the great, he says by way of recapitulation, as if returning to that which he had passed over or rather deferred: 'And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which they had in them.' This, without doubt, was done before the dead were judged; and yet it was mentioned after. This, then, is what I said, that he returned by recapitulation to what he had left unmentioned. But now he kept the order, and, that the order itself might be unfolded, he even fittingly repeated in its own place, concerning the judged dead, what he had already said. For when he had said: 'And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which they had in them,'
he presently added what he had set down a little before: 'And they were judged every one according to their works.' For this is what he had said above: 'And the dead were judged according to their works.' [XV] But who are the dead whom the sea gave up, which were in it? For neither are those who die in the sea not in hell, nor are their bodies preserved in the sea, nor — what is more absurd — did the sea have the good dead and hell the wicked. Who would think this? But assuredly some fittingly take 'the sea' in this place to be put for this present world. When, therefore, he would signify both those whom Christ shall find established in the body, together with those who are to rise again, as to be judged, he called them also 'dead' — both the good, to whom it is said:
'For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God,' and the wicked, of whom it is said: 'Let the dead bury their dead.' They can be called dead also for this reason, that they bear mortal bodies; whence the Apostle: 'The body indeed,' he says, 'is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness,' showing both to be in a living man established in this body — the body dead and the spirit life. Yet he did not say the body 'mortal,' but 'dead,' although a little after he calls the same 'mortal bodies,' as they are more usually called. These dead, therefore, the sea gave up, which were in it — that is, it gave up the men whom this world had, whoever were in it, because they had not yet died.
'And death and hell,' it says, 'delivered up the dead which they had in them.' The sea gave up, because they were present just as they were found; but death and hell delivered up, because they recalled them to the life from which they had already departed. And perhaps not without reason was it not enough to say 'death' or 'hell,' but both were said: 'death' on account of the good, who could only suffer death and not hell as well; but 'hell' on account of the wicked, who also pay penalties among the dead below.
For if it seems not absurd to believe that even the ancient saints, who held the faith of Christ to come, were indeed in places most remote from the torments of the impious, yet among those below, until the blood of Christ and his descent to those places should rescue them thence — then assuredly thereafter the good faithful, now redeemed by that outpoured price, know hell no more at all, until, their bodies also received, they receive the good things which they merit. But when he had said: 'And they were judged every one according to their works,' he briefly subjoined in what manner they had been judged: 'And death and hell,' he says, 'were cast into the lake of fire,' signifying by these names the devil, since he is the author of death and of the punishments below, and along with him the whole society of demons together.
For this is what he had already said above, more evidently, by way of anticipation: 'And the devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.' But what he had there more obscurely added, saying, 'where both the beast and the false prophet are,' here he says more openly: 'And whosoever were not found written in the book of life were cast into the lake of fire.' This book does not remind God, lest he be deceived by forgetfulness; but it signifies the predestination of those to whom eternal life shall be given. For neither is God ignorant of them, nor does he read in this book that he may know; but rather his very foreknowledge concerning them, which cannot be deceived, is the book of life, in which they are written — that is, foreknown beforehand.
[XVI] Now the judgment being finished, in which he foretold that the wicked are to be judged, it remains that he speak also of the good. For he has now explained those of whom it was briefly said by the Lord: 'So shall these go into everlasting punishment'; it follows that he should explain what is there also joined: 'But the righteous into life eternal.' 'And I saw,' he says, 'a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and earth were passed away, and the sea is now no more.' By this order shall come to pass what he said above by way of anticipation, that he saw one sitting upon the throne, from whose face heaven and earth fled.
For these, who are not written in the book of life, being judged and cast into the eternal fire (of which fire, of what kind it shall be, and in what part of the world or of things it shall be, I judge that no man knows, unless perhaps to someone the divine Spirit has shown it), then the fashion of this world shall pass away in a conflagration of worldly fires, as the flood came to pass in an inundation of worldly waters. In that worldly conflagration, therefore, as I said, the qualities of the corruptible elements which were suited to our corruptible bodies shall utterly perish by burning, and the very substance shall have those qualities which by a marvellous change befit immortal bodies;
so that, namely, the world, renewed for the better, may be aptly fitted to men also renewed in the flesh for the better. But as to what he says, 'And the sea is now no more' — whether it shall be dried up by that greatest heat, or whether it too shall be turned into the better, I could not easily say. For we read that there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, but of a new sea I do not recall having read anything anywhere; except that in this same book is found: 'as it were a sea of glass like unto crystal.' But there he was not speaking of this end of the world, nor does he seem to have said properly 'a sea,' but 'as it were a sea.' Although even now, as prophetic speech loves to mingle proper words with figurative ones and thus in a certain way to veil what is said, he could have said of that sea:
'And the sea is now no more' — the sea of which he had said above: 'And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.' For then this age of mortal men, turbulent and stormy, which he figured by the name of the sea, shall now no longer be. [XVII] 'And I saw,' he says, 'the great city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven from God, prepared as a new bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, neither shall there be any pain, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said: Behold, I make all things new.'
This city is said to come down from heaven, since heavenly is the grace by which God made it. On which account he says to it also through Isaiah: 'I am the Lord who made thee.' And from heaven indeed it has come down from its beginning, from which, throughout the time of this age, by the grace of God coming down from above through the laver of regeneration in the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, its citizens continually increase. But by the judgment of God, which shall be the last, through his Son Jesus Christ, so great and so new a brightness of it shall appear from God's gift, that no traces of oldness shall remain; since indeed the bodies also shall pass over from their old corruption and mortality into new incorruption and immortality.
For to take this of the present time, in which it reigns with its King a thousand years, seems to me a mark of exceeding impudence, since it says most openly: 'He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, neither shall there be any pain.' But who could be so absurd, and so mad in most obstinate contention, as to dare to affirm that in the miseries of this mortality — I say not the holy people, but any one of the saints, who either now leads, or shall lead, or has led this life — has no tears and pains; whereas rather, the holier and the fuller of holy desire each one is, so much the more abundant is his weeping in prayer? Or is it not the voice of a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem:
'My tears have been my bread day and night'; and: 'Every night I will wash my bed, I will water my couch with my tears'; and: 'My groaning is not hidden from thee'; and: 'My sorrow was renewed.' Or are they not indeed His sons who groan, being burdened, in that they are unwilling to be unclothed, but rather to be clothed upon, that this mortal may be swallowed up by life? Are they not the very ones who, having the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within themselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of their body? Or was the apostle Paul himself not a citizen of the Jerusalem that is above—nay, was he not this in far greater measure, when for his Israelite brethren according to the flesh he had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart?
But when shall there be no more death in that City, save when it shall be said: 'Where, O death, is thy strife? Where, O death, is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin.' And this assuredly shall then not be, when it shall be said: 'Where is it?' But now not merely some weak citizen of that City, but that same John himself cries out in his epistle: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' And in that book indeed, whose name is the Apocalypse, many things are said obscurely, so as to exercise the mind of the reader; and few things are in it, from the clear understanding of which the rest may be traced out with labour;
chiefly because it thus repeats the same things in many ways, so that it seems to be saying different things when it is found to be saying these very same things in one manner after another. But in these words, where he says: 'He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor any pain'—things concerning the age to come and concerning the immortality and eternity of the saints are said with such clarity (for then only and there only shall these things not be), that we ought to seek or read nothing plain in the sacred writings, if we shall have thought these words obscure. [XVIII] Now let us see what the apostle Peter also has written concerning this judgment:
'There shall come,' he says, 'in the last of the days scoffers with mockery, walking after their own lusts and saying: Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue thus from the beginning of creation. For this they willingly forget, that the heavens were of old, and an earth standing out of the water and through the water, by the word of God; whereby the world that then was, being flooded with water, perished. But the heavens and earth which are now, by the same word have been stored up, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and of the perdition of ungodly men. But of this one thing, beloved, be not ignorant, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.'
'The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should be turned to repentance. But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great rushing, and the elements, burning, shall be dissolved, and the earth and the works that are in it shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall perish, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct, awaiting and hastening toward the coming of the day of the Lord, through which the burning heavens shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with the heat of fire? But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to His promises, in which righteousness dwells.'
Here he said nothing about the resurrection of the dead, but assuredly enough about the destruction of this world. Where also, in recalling what happened before the flood, he seems in a certain manner to have admonished us to what extent we ought to believe that this world shall perish at the end of this age. For he said that at that time also the world which then was perished; and not only the globe of the earth, but even the heavens, by which we understand assuredly these aerial ones, whose place and space the rising water had then overtopped.
Therefore the whole, or nearly the whole, of this windy air (which he calls heaven, or rather heavens, but assuredly these lower ones, not those uppermost, where the sun and moon and stars are set) had been turned into a watery quality, and in this way had perished together with the earth, whose former face had assuredly been blotted out by the flood. 'But the heavens and the earth which are now,' he says, 'by the same word have been stored up, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and of the perdition of ungodly men.' Accordingly, the heavens and the earth—that is, the world which, in place of that world which perished by the flood, has been stored up out of the same water—is itself reserved for the final fire against the day of judgment and of the perdition of ungodly men.
For on account of a certain great transformation he does not hesitate to say that a perdition of men shall come to pass, though their nature is nevertheless to endure in eternal punishments. Perhaps someone may ask: if, after the judgment has taken place, this world shall burn before a new heaven and a new earth is set up in place of it, where at that very time of its conflagration shall the saints be, since, having bodies, they must of necessity be in some bodily place? We can answer that they shall be in the higher regions, to which the flame of that burning shall no more ascend than did the wave of the flood. For such bodies shall they have, that they may be wherever they shall have willed to be.
But being made immortal and incorruptible, they shall not dread even the fire of that conflagration, seeing that the corruptible and mortal bodies of three men were able to live unharmed in a burning furnace. [XIX] I see that many evangelical and apostolic sentences concerning this last divine judgment must be passed over by me, lest this volume be rolled out to excessive length; but by no means is the apostle Paul to be passed over, who, writing to the Thessalonians, says:
'We beseech you, brethren,' he says, 'by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto Him, that you be not soon shaken in mind, nor be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as though from us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand: let no one deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come the apostate first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as though he were God. Do you not hold in memory that, while I was yet with you, these things were told you? And now you know what withholds, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity already works.'